by Athena Storm
“Maybe when we’re done with our chat, you can find a way to love another alien, eh?”
“I’d rather be dead.”
He shrugs, “That, too, is possible.”
Don’t let him win, Daphne. He’s prying into you, and you’re letting it happen. Focus your mind. You’re letting emotions cloud your judgement. Turn this around.
Anger him. Get his emotions running and maybe he will give you something you can use. Or kill you. At this point, anything would be a blessing.
“At least the Vakutan had the sense not to worship your paper god.” His pointed ears twitch and he turns back on me. “The Ataxia myth has been discredited by every scientific body in the reasoning universe.”
“Myth?” His voice has gone still. The unctuous chuckles bubbling under everything until this moment flee, and a new, viper-like quiet replaces them. “The so-called scientific findings of the Alliance are eons behind what we have at our disposal.” One of his feet scrapes the floor, tugging at one of the cables buried in my skin and pulling nastily at my arm.
“Clearly, you are reaping the benefits of our work now.”
“You call this science? This parlor trick?”
“Trick?” Martek’s temper is rising now. Keep him spinning, Daphne.
“Humans have had sensors to read the body’s electrical impulses for centuries. Extrapolating the data into character observations is nothing new.” It’s a hard bluff on my part, but I have to keep driving on, “At least we had the decency not to saddle torture into it as well.”
“Torture is the currency of the galaxy,” his voice cuts over mine. “The thing that gives the coalition primacy is that we lack the fear to employ pain to get what we need. Ataxia grants the strength to enact pain, and she rewards that courage with the information we draw from our adversaries.”
He gestures to Rusk, who begins a slow arc with the dial on his panel. The hateful tremor inches into my arms again, and I surrender to the pain, using all of my resources to cloud my mind.
“Do you feel that,” Martek’s voice slices through the agony tearing at my body, “that is the divine Ataxian plan hauling your mind out through your flesh. Through her power, we can plow into your brain and take the darkest things you own.”
Slamming the door on his words, I struggle to throw up a firewall between my mind and their machinery. Opening the books in my mind, I pour over chemical formulas. Adding and subtracting compounds, obsessing over the minutia. Getting lost in the curl of the symbols. Anything to protect the essence of myself. Struggling to hide whatever these monsters might be rooting for in my mind.
Martek’s voice is running on, but I’ve reduced his screed to static, letting my vision blur as I delve into pure mental denial. It’s a tough fight as my body jerks and wrenches against the chair, wracked with agony. As though my body and my mind are tearing apart, each half pushed to the very limits of its endurance.
I’m going to die. This is when the moment comes. My heart is beating at an uncontrollable gallop, it’s bound to rupture under the strain.
Then, the agony stops with a sudden jolt.
“Why have you stopped,” Martek roars.
“She’s trying to die, Commander.”
Reeling to me in towering anger, Martek snarls back over his shoulder, “What do we have?”
Rusk shifts uneasily, “Chemistry.”
Another throaty cry bellows from the Shorcu and he snatches at one of the cables, yanking it from my hand with a nasty tug. The needle sails across the room, followed by a spattering arc of blood. It may hurt, but pain has become so familiar that it hardly registers.
“Rusk. Fetch a couple of Odex in here.”
“Sir.” As if in relief, the technician scampers out behind me. Heaving with fury, the Commander paces deliberately up to me, shaking in his desire to hurt me.
“The time for information has passed, woman. All that is left for you is pain. It doesn’t matter what we can gain from it anymore. I doubt very seriously that you have anything valuable to give. Apart from your screams. And, woman,” he looks me directly in the eye, “you are going to scream.”
I can hear the lumbering shuffle of Odex coming up behind me.
“My friends, I have something you’re going to like.” He looks at me with horrible disregard, “root out her fingernails.”
The sounds of satisfied grumbling trickle over me and two shaggy monsters creep into view, their red eyes shining at mine as they close in around me. Slaver drips from their jaws and pools on the floor as they hunker down to do their favorite kind of work. I ball my hands into fists in an effort not to make it easy for them.
One sticks a jagged claw at the base of my fist, cutting into my fingers and rolling my hand open. Biting down against the ordeal, I’m bucked forward in my seat as the whole wreck lurches forward. The Odex each roll backward, and even Martek staggers with the pitch.
The biting roar of an explosion resounds from deep behind me in the ship and my heat jumps at what it might mean. The Alliance has sent a team. They’ve found me. If only they can make it to me in time.
Thirty
Duric
I break off of the trail of devastation left behind by the Odex cruiser when I spot the massive hulk of the ship ahead of me. The Odex have several patrols about, but they are easy for me to avoid since they don’t bother to leave the easily trod path left by their wrecked vessel.
One of their plasma arrays was shorn off in the landing and is now tangled and twisted in the trees. This makes an excellent vantage point to reconnoiter the Odex craft, since the leaking fuel will hide my scent.
The Odex cruiser is constructed roughly like a dragon fly. The ‘head’ consists of the cockpit area, which took the brunt of their crash landing. It lays in tattered ruins, open and exposed to the jungle, and it also provides me with my entrance.
In the next segment lies the sundered remains of their plasma array. One side is still reasonably intact, though one look tells me they will need extensive repair before being able to function. The shorn off side, which made for good over earlier, has left a deep rent in the hull which could either provide an alternative entrance or an exit if things get dicey. Of course, I only intend to retreat once Daphne is safely along for the trip.
Past the wreck of the plasma array is the crew quarters and what amounts to a galley. Odex don’t believe in privacy, so there won’t be individual rooms, just filthy cushions the hairy brutes jealously guard from their fellows even though they are all fundamentally the same. Past that will be the command center, where I expect to find Daphne, followed by the engine room, probably the most intact area of the ship.
Earlier, I picked a gourd type fruit off of one of the vines winding their way through the jungle. Roughly the size of a human head, I have no idea if the orange-pink vegetation is edible, and I do not care.
What matters to me is that once I’ve cut a hole in it and drained the juices out, it makes a great receptacle for the fragrant sludge that is Coalition starship fuel. I’m no engineer, but I know enough about circuitry to use the Odex comm devices to run current through the gourd’s innards.
Now I have what amounts to bomb on my back, and extremely volatile bomb that could go off with the slightest spark of electricity. I hope my crude wiring job is up to snuff as I clamber down my tree and wait for the latest Odex patrol to pass.
I figure that Daphne is probably being held in the command center, so I plant my bomb in one of the dented thrusters. It should create a suitably loud and dramatic explosion, without doing so much harm to the ship that Daphne is endangered. Using the comms, I rig up a timer. How long will it take me to circle back to the front of the ship? Better give myself five galactic standard minutes.
Unfortunately, I overestimate the time it takes to get near the ruined cockpit, and I wind up having to wait. As the minutes tick by, I start to worry. Maybe I didn’t set the device properly, or perhaps there wasn’t enough fuel in the gourd to create an explosion.
Or maybe the Odex found my bomb and are even now creeping up on me for an ambush…
Just when my anxiety is getting out of control, and I’m ready to charge in regardless of my plan, the jungle is rocked by a heavy boom. Bits of shrapnel rain down and an impressive orange fireball roils up from the back of the wrecked Odex vessel.
Predictably, a large group of Odex come spilling out, rushing toward the rear of the vessel. I can only imagine the chaos going on inside. Hopefully, Martek will be too distracted by the explosion to continue hurting Daphne.
Once the Odex run past my position, I grip my purloined Odex pistol and my khaffi. The second pistol is my back up, in case one of the hairy brutes tries to disarm me. While they are struggling to get the pistol they can see, I will draw the one they can’t and shoot them.
Or so I hope. The chaos of battle is wild and unpredictable.
I encounter no Odex in the cockpit, which stands to reason since it’s utterly in ruins. Consoles are bent and shredded, wires dangle all about, and the pilot’s seat is soaked in blood. Moving through the cockpit, I come to the wrecked plasma array. Here rubble has been cleared to create a path, but it’s not in much better shape than the cockpit.
Then I step through a wedged open door and spot my first foes. Three hairy Odex turn their shaggy heads my way, red eyes narrowing to slits as they emit snorting grunts. Comparisons between Odex and terran swine are unfair—to the swine. Odex are much uglier.
One of them is within a few feet of me, but before he can bring his ax to bear I blast him through the temple with the pistol. His eyes widen and he falls stiffly to the deck, but his fellows are quick to take his place.
The next Odex tries to grab my pistol, and actually wraps his hairy hand around the barrel. Unfortunately, that means that I blow his fingers off when I pull the trigger. He has about a second to contemplate his life as an amputee before I drive the hook of my khaffi into his belly and rip a wide gash. The Odex’s entrails slop to the ground and he pitches forward, screaming in abject agony.
A sharp crack, and then pain erupts on my dorsal ridges. The third Odex fired his weapon on me, but my dense endoskeleton saved me from deep penetration. He fires again wildly, but I take the extra nanosecond to aim. It’s all the time I need to put my next bullet right through his eye.
Drawn by the sounds of conflict, more Odex spill out of the living area. Several of them are wounded, with bandages around limbs and torsos, but they seem no less fierce for it. They keep their pistols holstered and instead wade into combat swinging their mighty axes.
But the corridor here is narrow, and strewn with rubble. They can’t approach me more than two at a time, and that doesn’t give them much room to swing their weaponry. Odex vessels are designed for attack, not for siege type defense.
The lead Odex takes my khaffi hook in the groin, and I split him open up to his throat. As he falls, dying but not dead, his fellow just stomps on his torn and bleeding chest and goes on the attack. I block his ax with the haft of my khaffi, the impact so intense it makes my arms go numb. Tendons pop and creak in my shoulders as I strain to keep the brute from knocking me prone. His snout curls back in a snarl, displaying rows of canine type teeth.
I’m losing this contest of strength. Slowly but surely, the Odex is forcing me backward. Either I will soon lose my balance or my spine will break, because I cannot match him strength for strength.
But I can use his own strength against him. Suddenly I cease all resistance and allow myself to fall backward. This is no haphazard stumble, however. I control my movement to land on my back, and thrust a foot into his midsection as his own efforts drive him ever forward. Using my foot for leverage, I send him sailing over me to crash into the jagged ruin of the plasma array. He winds up impaled on a sheared off support strut, a gurgling howl escaping his mouth at the same time as a frothy fountain of blood.
I continue the motion and do a backward somersault, rising back to my feet just in time to block another wild ax swing. Firing the Odex pistol, I miss my first shot but the second takes him in the thigh. Though not lethal, it distracts him long enough for me to use the hook to slice his throat ear to ear.
Even as one foe falls, another takes his place. My world becomes a chaotic whirlwind of swinging blades, spurting blood, and the screams of the dying. Blood seeps from half a dozen wounds on my body, but I fight on, emptying both my Odex pistols and the remaining rounds in my khaffi.
Just as I vanquish the last of my foes, the Odex who rushed to investigate the explosion return. Though my arms are weary, and my breath comes in ragged gasps, I turn to face their charge. I back away, giving ground but also moving into an even narrower section of the corridor. Their big axes can’t generate full power because they have little room to swing them. But my hook can utilize lateral movement, thrusting in, digging into flesh, and then ripping back the same direction and taking gobs of quivering flesh and spurts of blood with them.
It’s brutal, death by degrees, and several of the Odex lie wounded and unwilling to continue to fight, instead trying to stem the flow of blood from the horrific injuries I have inflicted.
Once I’m sure there will be no more assaults from the rear, I stumble ahead, spilling blood all along the corridor and dragging my khaffi stick behind me. At last I stagger into the command chamber, and spot my dear Daphne strapped to a table. The sight of so many wires and devices sticking out of her skin sends me tumbling toward pure rage.
But the sight of Martek’s skinny hand holding a needle to her temple makes me freeze in my tracks.
“Take one more step, Vakutan, and she dies.”
Thirty-One
Daphne
My heart is in my throat. Some kind of Alliance team has arrived, but I can’t see the door behind me with my head cinched in place. The sound of carnage has been echoing up to us, and I have watched Martek reduced from a bilious tyrant to a sniveling rat. The horrible needle once buried in my ear is now leveled at my temple and my life is held at ransom for his demands.
“If you kill her, it’s going to be a terrible day for you.”
Duric. His voice resounds in the ruined ship and everything inside me melts. I can’t believe he’s alive. The part of me that ran cold after seeing him swept under the waves bursts back to radiant life. But it’s a dangerous revival – now I have something to lose.
Moments ago, my death would have come as a welcome reprieve, but now? I would give anything to fling myself into his arms.
“He’s here,” Martek calls out to the ship, “The Vakutan is here!”
“No one is coming.”
“There are patrols outside,” the Shorku’s withered hand is shaking.
“Dead.”
“You couldn’t.”
“I have.”
From the sound of his voice, I can tell that Duric is weak. His exhaustion is evident. He needs an ally.
“He’s not one to bluff, Commander. And it’s quiet out there.”
“Shut your mouth, woman.”
From behind me, Duric’s voice snaps out in a snide quip, “Very tough with a woman, aren’t you?”
“What did you say, Vakutan?” Martek’s grip on the probe tightens.
“I said, you’ve been cowering back here like a puny little smitling, beating up on a woman while your minions do the man’s work. How would your stupid god Ataxia feel about that?”
“Watch what you say, you worthless cur.”
“Please,” Duric laughs. “She’s not even a woman of your own kind. A human woman? They’re the weakest of any species. Even still you’ve had to tie her down. You’re pathetic.”
“Am I,” Martek snarls.
“You are. Look,” I hear the thump and clatter of weapons dropping to the floor. “Would you like to try your strength on a man? Don’t be afraid. I’ll even give you the first swing.”
As if he had been coiled to strike, Martek launches himself out of my field of vision and I hear the two men thump into each other. Their feet scu
ffle against the deck, and they grunt with the struggle.
A scampering rush boils up behind me and I’m juddered forward as they slam into the back of my chair. They stagger away, and the chair crunches back beneath me. It’s broken. The straps binding me to it slacken, and I’m able to wriggle my head free.
Turning at last to see Duric for the first time, I’m shocked at the amount of blood on him. It can’t all be his, but the streams pouring from his nose are upsetting. He and Martek are locked in an ugly clutch. There’s no question that Duric is the abler fighter, but his strength has been sapped by the continual exertion and he’s struggling to maintain the upper hand.
For his part, Martek is a nasty fighter. And he knows the terrain, so he’s using it to his advantage, pinning Duric up against the equipment and endeavoring to manhandle him back into a corner. His nails swipe at Duric’s bleeding chest and he bites when he can.
Pulling my hands free, the rest of the binding goes slack and I slip my way out of the chair, tearing at the wires pinioning me to the station. With a terrible tug, the long needle pulls free from my hand and clatters to the floor. Snatching at the other, smaller wires pinched under my skin, I free myself, only at the last plucking away the sticky sensors latched to my head.
Duric has broken free from the wall and lands a mighty punch low into the Shorcu’s ribs, drawing out a wheezing cry. While he’s off balance, Duric knees his staggering adversary in the chest, and Martek crashes to his knees. His enemy seemingly bested, Duric turns his eyes to me for the first time.
Relief washes over his face upon seeing me. That rakish grin plays at his lips.
“You look good.”
I scoff and fold my arms across my breasts.
“Everything hurts,” I say back.
“It does.” He nods, commiserating.
